Category: happiness

Hello, Clarity. Bye For Now, Blog.

Hello, Clarity. Bye For Now, Blog.

Posted on by Dana Goldman

It would be polite for me to say it’s been a minute since I’ve written on this blog. But the truth is that this “minute” has extended for almost six months. Sheesh!

While I’d like to say this absence of blog posts has been entirely intentional, the opposite is true. Writing a blog post has been on my never-ending to-do list for months. Surely you have at least one task on your own list that is similar: a task that is never urgent, low priority, doesn’t have a big impact on others, and, thus, wallows on the Perpetual To-Do List. You know that to-do list: the one that never, ever ends.

My current pile of to-do lists.

While I’m generally not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions (especially the ones related to dieting) I am setting an intention for 2022 that feels pretty resolute: I only want to write tasks on my to-do lists IF those tasks help me and others live meaningful, good lives.

That doesn’t mean all my tasks will suddenly be pleasant. I’ll still make trips to the post office, do dishes, and water plants. These sorts of tasks are rarely meaningful in themselves and also often annoying, but sending packages from the post office help me stay in touch with people I love. Doing dishes helps my family have a home that isn’t entirely chaotic. Watering plants helps me feel good in my space.

And here’s the truth: Even though I didn’t intend to stop my blog, I also am not convinced it’s worth a recommitment ceremony for this next year. Does the blog possibly help potential clients know I’m a good or bad fit? Sure. But is the blog – and the time and head space it takes up – really helping me or others live meaningful, good lives? I’m not convinced. Somewhere in the last year or two, it became a should, not a want. (Also, if there aren’t enough blog posts up for you to get a sense of me, shoot me an email! Give me a call!)

So – happy almost new year. May we all continue to gain clarity about who and what matter most to us. May our lives be an extension of our priorities to the extent we can control. And may we live as meaningful and good lives as possible.

Happy New Year! Your WEIGHT is NOT your WORTH.

Posted on by Dana Goldman

Contemplating a new year’s diet? If so, please first consider these words by Anne Lamott:

We need — I need — to have the same little talk we have every year at this time: I know you might be starting a New Year’s diet. I used to start diets, too. I hated to mention this to my then-therapist. She would say cheerfully, “Oh, that’s great, honey. How much weight are you hoping to gain?”

I got rid of her. No one talks to me that way.

Well, okay, maybe it was 10 years later, after she had helped lead me back home, to myself, to radical self-care, to friendship with my own heart, to a glade that had always existed deep inside me, to mostly healthy eating, but that I’d avoided all those years by achieving, dieting, binging, people-pleasing and so on.

Lamott goes on to say:

It’s really okay, though, to have (or pray for) an awakening around your body. It’s okay to stop hitting the snooze button, and to pay attention to what makes you feel great about yourself, one meal at a time. Unfortunately, it’s yet another inside job. If you are not okay with yourself at 185 pounds, you will not be okay at 150, or even 135. The self-respect and peace of mind you long for is not out there. It’s within. I hate that. I resent that more than I can say. But it’s true.

Sometimes people seek out counseling because of the pesky problem of a diet that just won’t work. Or in the middle of talking about depression or anxiety, a client will also mention a weight gain that’s simply intolerable. If weight’s not in the foreground, it’s always hovering in the background.

And there are good reasons why. In general, here’s the message that our culture gives us:

Weight is something that can and should be controlled: the more tightly the better. Weight – and appearance – matter more than health and happiness. Fat=bad, and too much if any fat makes us undesirable (to self or others). If we don’t fit the current white ideal of beauty, we should feel ashamed and make a massive effort (often using lots of hard-earned money) to “fix” what’s seen as a problem.  If we’re unhappy and dissatisfied, the messaging goes, losing weight will make us happy and satisfied, fixing all our issues with relationships and self-love and self-worth and self-confidence.

Sometimes these messages are so convincing, so embedded in the fabric of white American culture, that we don’t realize these messages are beliefs, not facts. And when we examine them for their truthfulness, it turns out that these beliefs range from complete bull to containing a bit of truthiness to being only partially true if placed appropriately within a larger context.

But here’s what I know.

*Weight can only be controlled to a certain extent.

*While “dieting” acts like it’s on the outs with certain crowds, it’s merely gone underground. It goes by code words now like eating “clean” and eating for “health.”

*The connection between weight and health isn’t as well established as we’ve been led to believe. The Health at Every Size movement and Lizzo (yay!) are challenging those of us who were raised to believe that being healthy means being skinny.

*When people lose weight, it usually doesn’t change how happy they feel.

*The energy that so many women spend trying to control their weight could be used for SO MANY OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS including: self-care, friendships, walks, exploring interests, toppling outdating systems of oppression, etc.

*We need to look at WHY we feel such a desperate need to control, WHY we can’t imagine being happy without being a certain (different size), WHY our self-love is tied up with weight.

I am so excited to be supporting clients to explore weight, body image, self-worth, and to begin to disentangle weight – and the overall need to control – from happiness. Best of luck to you this year as you experiment with different ways of being in – and thinking about – your body.

 

 

 

A New Location!

Posted on by Dana Goldman

I had no intention of moving to a new office. I wasn’t even looking. I liked my own space too much, the great colleagues, the funny signs in the bathroom (“Clients with OCD must not wash their hands”), and even my commute by bike down the Beltline. When friends asked if I wanted to work closer to home, I’d say, “I’m receptive if the right space appears, but I’m not out looking.”

A year or two passed. Then in February my colleague and friend Liz Wilder Young called: “Want to come see a possible office space with me?”

“Sure,” I said. “But you know I’m not really interested.”  

Soon I was in front of a building I had passed many times before: grey stone, two stories, nestled between the church where I vote and my neighborhood’s police station. I had been inside a handful of times when it held a small grocery there, mostly buying ice cream on quiet Friday evenings. It was in the heart of the intown neighborhood of Kirkwood, a 15-minute walk from home.

Upstairs, Liz and I entered an office suite. Meandering through, I came to an office with windows on two sides: one overlooking the public library across the street, the other with a view of the church next door. And as crazy as it sounds, I felt a thrill inside me, my heart cracking open, the rightness of this space thrumming in me. The space just felt right. How could I resist? And a stone building for Stone Cottage Counseling!

In June, we moved into the office suite—what we’ve named the Neighborhood Counseling Center — with fellow therapists Maggie Akstin (who is joining Stone Cottage Counseling—yay!) and Ginny Thompson. We’re all aiming to provide the best possible experiences for clients (through high-quality counseling, classes, and workshops) in this sweet space, and hope to also be a big asset to the neighborhood.

As I ready myself for this change, I’ve been reflecting on the uniqueness of this process for me. I usually work so hard to make things happen, and yet this new office appeared without effort. I have been taught, like we all are, that we can only succeed and be happy if we’re doing, working, striving. And it’s true that often times these skills and related qualities are so valuable.

But not always. Sometimes hard work is no guarantee of success, despite our best efforts or well-connected networks, and I am beginning to know viscerally that there are times when receptivity, or simple openness, can be rewarded. I am practicing staying open to things unfolding on their own timeframe. I am practicing resisting a false sense of urgency that things must happen. I am allowing myself the opportunity to be surprised by what emerges.

So far my experience with this new office is showing me that sometimes things really do unfold in terrific ways without lots of energy or effort. So here is my query for this season: Can we be open to the possibility that sometimes things emerge and change in good ways without our hard work, that things can simply be right without having to strive to make them so?